


First times, last nights

by Taeyn



Series: echo, I will not talk with thee [4]
Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French, The Likeness - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Heartbreak, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, References to Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 10:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9816779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeyn/pseuds/Taeyn
Summary: I didn’t have anything left to hang onto, and, in what felt like an emptiness so vast it was obscene, all I saw was my best friend. The idiot who worried too much and occasionally made me waltz when no one else would. The reason I stayed.On Justin and Rafe’s last night together, Rafe goes back to their first.





	

The moon was up, Daniel moving about the kitchen and Lexie not dead five hours when I knew I couldn’t take it. The peeling plaster on my bedroom ceiling warped fissures into my mind, great leaping gaps where she’d fallen. The inside of my skull felt bruised- and that’s a fucking pitiful word that doesn’t come close to how it actually was- and I was seeing colours I’d never noticed, fuzzy edges where things should have been sharp.

I’d have liked to tell myself that I knew what I was doing. That every fucked up second I’d done fucking _nothing_ was somehow made better, by the fact that later I couldn’t stop myself. That I was bent on leaving the house, not because I was so out of my head that I couldn’t deal with these four walls, but because I was trying to save her.

It was when I let myself believe that- that was when I saw her, smiling and teasing and completely, _utterly_ okay with it. Lexie never seemed to think the truth was what actually mattered, and, even now, even after _this_ \- she never looked back.

“Rafe…?”

The voice stopped me at my bedroom door, and through the dark I could see the bolts on our main one fastened. Like the mania had all come from outside, and a few brass locks could keep it there. For a moment I had a wild image of Daniel hanging cloves of garlic at our windows too, and some kind of choked, hysterical noise escaped my throat.

“Are you going for a walk?”

I realised the question was Justin’s, and some time in the last ten minutes, Daniel must have gone upstairs. Or maybe it had been hours. I was ready to believe it had been night for days, and the living room had always been this spotless. I had woken up in a shadow of my world.

“Get out of my way,” I hissed. He made no effort to stop me, and I didn’t move a step forward.

“You want to be sure it's real?” Justin whispered, his voice hoarse and wavering.

“I know it’s real,” I snapped, and the words tasted like bile on my tongue. I wanted to hit something, myself at the top of the list. Because as soon as I’d said it, the floor stopped tipping beneath me, my sanity leaking back. And I didn’t fucking deserve it.

“I’ll come with you,” he said, and I knew, for Justin, this was making an effort. His shirt was streaked with sweat, lower lip red and shiny where he must’ve bitten it. He was shaking, and I knew he wouldn’t make it down the drive without collapsing or being sick again. But that wasn’t why my blood coiled at the idea. I should’ve had the sense to keep my eyes down, but something nasty and spiteful clawed at my windpipe and snagged him in a glare. And he knew.

“Or you can just go,” he said quietly, and I could tell, for my sake, he was trying not to cry. “That would probably be better.”

“Nothing’s ever going to be _better_ ,” I spat back, the echo of it raw and hollow beneath my ribcage. Taking a cheap shot at Justin was less than pathetic, it was fucking appalling. We’d sat side by side at the same cards table. We’d drunk from the same glass.

I exhaled a sob, and Justin’s eyes widened with surprise. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen him do the same- shivered headlong into that rush that burns worse than whisky, knocks you down and funnels you to the brink. I buckled forward, my fingers swaying for the door frame. Justin managed to reach me before the floor.

“I’ve got you, you’re alright,” he babbled, but we were both shaking so badly that he had to lower me to my knees. I coughed and dry-retched as the dizziness wrapped in, weakly trying to signal that Justin might want to shuffle back. He didn’t.

“It’ll pass, it’ll pass in a moment,” Justin said softly, and I wondered if my heartbeat was really that loud. My eardrums were roaring with it, my neck and hands plunging from hot to cold. I shouldn’t have reached for him, I could feel every twitch in the back of my throat. But I didn’t have anything left to hang onto, and, in what felt like an emptiness so vast it was obscene, all I saw was my best friend. The idiot who worried too much and occasionally made me waltz when no one else would. The reason I stayed.

And then I was really crying.

“Oh oh, oh,” Justin whispered, fumbling his hands and patting me like he didn’t know what to do with either of us. Neither did I.

“It’s my fault,” I choked, my voice young and racing. “I think I loved her, and that must be why she wanted to-”

“It wasn’t.” Justin cut me off, either before I believed it or he did. “You didn’t make this, Rafe, you couldn’t have, it _isn’t_ -”

I don’t know if Justin’s always seen me as better than I am. The thing is, for him, I very nearly was. He let me cling to the idea that I was worth more than a pheasant hunting season and a bankroll of tuition fees, that I could care for my family the way my father hadn’t cared for me. He made it real. And for a second, as our fingers found each other’s, I almost believed it still could be. But then the cracks on the ceiling were moving again, opening and stretching with the dawn, and I knew when they reached us there’d be nothing left. We could be those people for one more night.

“Thank you,” I managed, and he looked more startled than if I’d cursed. “For being here. As I lose my fucking mind.”

Justin spluttered- I think it may have been a laugh- then flinched as he heard himself. I squeezed his hand as a breath lifted his shoulders, held tight until he let it out. I kissed him- or he kissed me- and for all the harshness and terror, he was tender. My cheeks were wet from tears and he tasted like mint toothpaste, his hair damp and vaguely soapy.

What I’ve never told him, and I’m still not sure I know why, is that Justin kisses like he’ll never know warmth again, that every second is splinteringly precious, to be cradled and relished and devoured in one. For all his nerves and his worry, he’s an arrestingly spontaneous lover, the sort who can leave you breathless just from making you smile. He nudged the door closed behind us, I felt giddy and clumsy, our first time all over again. We could go back. I was smiling.

-

“Take this off,” Justin had said to me, tugging the sleeves of my jumper. The sun was high and the grass spread around us, the others on a hike with the picnic basket and Abby’s blackberry pie at the end of the day if they collected enough.

“What’ll the neighbours think?” I joked, tipsy as hell, my arms raised so he could pull it off me all the same.

“They won’t,” Justin grinned, untangling himself from some fussy starched thing that was apparently all the rage in _Jane Eyre_. “And if they do, it’ll all be wishing and hoping.”

I snorted, pinned him to the tartan blanket. His hands raked through my hair, sucked my breath with a twitch of his lips. I forgot my snarky reply and he laughed anyway, ankles twined together as I took in the lines and dips of his body, trying to look like I wasn’t. That only made him laugh more.

“Mm- oh my _gosh_ ,” Justin chuckled, and I froze my hand at his waist. “Are you _sure_ you haven’t done this before?”

I exhaled a laugh, stupid and flattered, kissed him deep enough that we were both flying blind. His mouth was sweet and citrusy, tea and mandarin. Or orange. We’d filled our thermoses with homemade cordial, brought salt and cups and then drank straight from the flask. I felt blurry and tingly, not too drunk that I didn’t know what was what, enough to say some truths I’d regret.

“I think about you,” I admitted. Justin’s head popped back into my vision, he’d been carefully unbuttoning my collar. “More than I think I should.”

“Who says you shouldn’t?” Justin returned. He was trying to sound nonchalant, but his face had flushed pink with pleasure, and he sucked his lower lip to stop a smile. “Because we’re both guys?”

I choked on a laugh, for some reason not expecting the obvious.

“No,” I said gently. I brushed my hand over his knuckles, he spread his fingers to weave mine between. “Because we’re housemates. Because we’re friends.”

“Oh.” Justin huffed another giggle, and I thought he sounded relieved. “Yes. That too. Well.” He squeezed my hand, his own trembling. “I’d like to think we could still be _friends_ , I mean, nothing would have to _change_ -”

“I don’t want things not to change,” I said suddenly, I didn’t know where it came from. I took my hands to his face, my head suddenly clear. “I don’t want to forget, and I don’t want to not talk about it. I want this.”

Justin’s lips parted a fraction, his eyes wide and tender. Then he gave a slow grin, warm, and for once, didn’t cut his eyes away. His look still haunts me now.

“Alright,” he said softly, turned and pressed a kiss to my palm. “I won’t forget. I promise.”

-

We lay on the floorboards, aching and winded, the sunlight milky over our sweat. My knees and the heels of my hands were raw and smarting, his body was limp and pale. I kept blinking, parts of the room appearing to me in irrelevant flashes. The charcoal sketches on my walls. Papers- unsorted, glasses- dirty. Clothes still in boxes from the move. The head. Lexie’s red bandana. When I closed my eyes I could imagine her next to me, messy curls and lily of the valley. When I opened them there was only Justin, the wounds and his hope, the bleakness in my stare.

“You want me to go,” he said under his breath, tried to force a smile from the tears.

I got up and walked to my bed. I heard him get to his feet, hesitate at the door. I pressed my face into my pillow, clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t answer. I was dead, she was lost. She was fading now, as ghosts tend to do, she was skipping and dancing, whispering something into Justin’s ear. He couldn’t see her. He turned around, footsteps quiet toward his bedroom. He never even knew she was there.

-

**Author's Note:**

> this is still and will forever be one of the most meaningful books I have ever read~ ;w; thank you for reading, kudos and comments are always loved and appreciated <3


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